LEGAL MOVE GIVES GREEN LIGHT TO US SUPPLIERS OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA

In a further sign that the Obama administration is shifting away from
the "war on drugs" policies of its predecessor, the country's top law
enforcement official has announced that the federal government will
end raids on groups that supply medical marijuana.

Eric Holder, the attorney general, said federal agencies would now
concentrate their efforts on traffickers who pass themselves as
medical dispensaries and "use medical marijuana laws as a shield".

He said: "Given the limited resources that we have, our focus will be
on [those] growing, cultivating substantial amounts of marijuana, and
doing so in a way that's inconsistent with federal and state law."

Thirteen states have laws permitting medicinal use of marijuana, but
under George Bush federal law enforcement officials ignored state
laws, raiding dispensaries and threatening to penalise doctors who
prescribed it.

Medical marijuana providers yesterday welcomed the move. Kevin Reed,
president of the Green Cross, a San Francisco non-profit, medical
marijuana service with more than 2,000 patients, said: "It's
definitely a huge relief off our shoulders, [from] thinking that
someone might bust down our doors and take us to prison for helping
people. It gives us the opportunity to come out of the closet a
little more and ... to help people."

Kirk Manter, of the Rhode Island Compassion Club, an organisation
which provides "whatever a patient may need", said: "I feel it will
make the state legislature much more willing to allow for collective
cultivation sites. It allows much more room for dialogue on the state level."

Bruce Mirken, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, a
research group that supports decriminalising the drug, said Obama's
policy shift indicated "the small beginnings of rationality". He
added: "What we've seen is the change from eight years of policy on
marijuana being run by pitchfork-wielding fanatics, to people who are
willing to at least let facts and science and commonsense play a role."

Despite the change in attitude at the White House, medical marijuana
remains illegal under federal law. The attorney general said his
comments were consistent with Obama's words during his presidential
campaign when he said his mother had died of cancer and that he saw
no difference between prescribed morphine and marijuana used to relieve pain.

There is growing public support in the US for liberalisation of
marijuana laws. Opinion polls show a majority of Americans backing
legal medical marijuana. In Massachusetts, voters in November
decriminalised possession of an ounce or less of the drug, and a
California lawmaker recently proposed outright legalisation.